Apparently
unable to figure out their own motion picture, the writer and director of Beyond Borders, intentionally or not,
have produced a reasonably rare specimen, an almost perfectly ambiguous work.
The movie constantly alternates subject and style, atmosphere and tone, emotion
and theme, in an uncomfortable and generally unsatisfactory rhythm, first
attempting one story, one genre, one approach, then abruptly switching to
another. The clumsy and uncoordinated alternations produce a sentimental and
occasionally incredible plot that hardly justifies the characters’ windy
speeches or consciously noble behaviors.
           In keeping with its air of naive
artifice, the picture opens with a sequence right out of myth, legend, and
fairy tale. An angry intruder crashes an elegant charity ball, haranguing the
crowd about famine and disease in refugee camps in Africa, attacking their
materialism and comfort, and challenging them to invest their money and
themselves in truly improving the lot of the poor, the sick, and the starving.
The intruder, Dr. Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) so deeply moves Sarah Jordan
(Angelina Jolie), the American wife of a wealthy Englishman (Linus Roache),
that she cleans out her bank accounts, purchases food and medical supplies, and
travels to Callahan’s camp in Ethiopia to help in any way she can.
           That journey and her experience
there permanently transform Sarah’s life. Observing the appalling conditions of
the camp, the hunger and pain of the people, their betrayal by a corrupt
government, and the heroic struggles of the camp personnel, she decides to
devote herself to improving the human condition in places so dreadfully
devastated and hostile that human life itself seems miracle enough. She also
falls in love with Nick Callahan, which nicely combines her commitment to her
new vocation with the romance that the film’s publicity so insistently
stresses.
           The picture covers more than a
decade, taking up Sarah’s story at various intervals, as she returns to London
to work for humanitarian relief with the United Nations, bears a son and a
daughter, and more or less falls out of love with her husband. Keeping in
contact with Nick and his co-workers, she monitors the progress of his efforts,
eventually traveling to see him under United Nations auspices (in company with
the usual load of food and medicine) to a couple of war-torn regions, Cambodia
under the Khmer Rouge, and Chechnya before the United States changed sides in
the region’s conflict with Russia.
           On those journeys she repeatedly
witnesses the manifold sufferings of the impoverished and displaced, and their
apparently endless victimization at the hands of armed militias, bandits, and
tyrannical governments. Unfortunately, by the third time we see her bouncing in
a Land Rover over some rocky roads in hostile territory, the pattern comes to
seem at least a bit comical.
           The many years the film encompasses,
the locations on three continents, and the sheer size of the whole endeavor may
qualify Beyond Borders as the epic
its publicity trumpets — it clearly exhibits the necessary amplitude of time
and space — but the confusion of themes tends to blunt any potential epic
power. The panorama of human misery against which the script displays the odd
and sporadic romance generally overwhelms the love story, turning it into a
trivial and perfunctory business occupying a small space in the foreground.
Although the script at least confronts the reality of a tragic ending, it also
settles for a good deal of sentimentality along the way.
           Fresh from the athletic activity and
skintight outfit of the Lara Croft flicks,
Angelina Jolie retains a quite inappropriate movie-star glamour even in the
arid landscape of Ethiopia, the sweltering jungle of Cambodia, and the frigid
wastes of Chechnya. It’s simply difficult to believe her as a sort of secular
missionary for the United Nations.
           Her love interest, Clive Owen,
resembles some rugged, brooding, fiery leading man of the cinematic past,
ranting and cursing and overacting like some ancient Shakespearean on a bad
night, say the young Laurence Olivier at his worst or even Orson Welles tanked
up on his own ego. Despite the protestations of the script and the demands of
the story, their purported passion never really strikes any sparks or
transcends the perfunctory and automatic routines of any weak melodrama.
           Despite its several problems and its
sheer bloated excessiveness, Beyond
Borders at least provides something of a platform for an undeniably worthy
goal, the dramatizing of the ongoing suffering of untold millions of people in
the world most of us so comfortably inhabit.
           The script apparently inspired Jolie
herself to work for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which
earned her an award from the Secretary General. If the movie encourages others
to consider the plight of their fellow human beings and even act to improve
their lives, perhaps it will then achieve some level of success beyond its
dubious achievement as art.
Beyond Borders,
starring Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Teri Polo, Linus Roache, Noah Emmerich,
Yorick Van Wageningen, Elizabeth Whitmere; written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen;
directed by Martin Campbell. Cinemark Tinseltown, Hoyts Greece Ridge, Loews
Webster, Regal Culver Ridge, Regal Eastview, Regal Henrietta.
You
can hear George and his movie reviews on WXXI-FM 91.5 Fridays at 7:20 a.m.,
rerun on Saturdays at 8:50 a.m.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2003.
